Tirana Mosque and Museum of Religious Harmony by BIG

Project: The Mosque and Museum of Religious HarmonyDesigned by Bjarke Ingels GroupLocation: Tirana, AlbaniaWebsite: www.big.dk
Noted Danish practice BIG designs a cultural centre in Tirana, this winning entry was selected out of five finalists including Spanish Architect Andreas Perea Ortega, French Architecture Studio, Dutch SeARCH and Zaha Hadid Architects. To create this massive project Bjarke Ingels Group will collaborate with Martha Schwartz Landscape, Buro Happold , Speirs & Major, Lutzenberger & Lutzenberger, and Global Cultural Asset Management. To take the transformation of Tirana further city's municipality is developing this 27,000m2 project consisting of an Islamic Centre, Mosque and a Museum of Religious Harmony.

The complex will not only serve the Muslim community, Tirana embraces all three major religions Orthodox Christianity, Catholicism and Islam, with a recent completion of two new churches all the religions will have a place of worship in the epicenter of Albanian capital. The newly build centre will educate the public about Islamic values and take and take an important role in fight for religious tolerance.

Comments

I have nothing against the design proposal and respect the work of BIG but I do have an ideological issue with the idea of the building. It is a slap in the face to intellectually honest people and free thinkers out there. The idea of a Museum of Religious Harmony is an insult. Religion, explicitly the 3 main Abrahamic religions, are absolutely exclusive entities in their scripture and in their claims. They are simply incompatible (“you must believe in our savior or burn in hell”). Not only this, but in light of everything that is happening in the Islamic world (soon to be the entire world), the last thing we need is an over apologetic multimillion dollar structure erected to perpetuate a lie.

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